Review of Amazon's Associate Program

Quick Summary

Review

Amazon.com is perhaps known as a great place to buy books, although they
also sell many other products such as music CDs, DVDs, software, electronics, video games,
toys, cameras and more (even kitchenware and home/garden stuff).

Amazon.com's associate program (For Amazon "associate program" is
their word for "affiliate program") is a free opportunity where you can make
money by helping sell these products from your web site. For books, using
the "classic" (more on this in a moment) referral fee structure you earn 15% commission for books you
help sell as a result of direct links from your site, and 5% commission for
books that the customer buys by surfing around at Amazon after following
your link. Commission rates for other products may vary.

In the last couple of years or so, Amazon.com have introduced a choice of
commission structures, and you get to choose which commission structure
before the start of each quarter. The choice is between the "classic"
commission structure, which pays at the rates Amazon.com have always paid,
and a "tiered" structure where your commissions can be
raised by reaching certain targets. Sometimes the tiered commission structure
has also placed additional requiremenets on affiliates - and I myself
have found this confusing (I personally would much prefer if Amazon simply
had one commission structure - the classic - and allowed you to potentially
earn more, perhaps as bonuses, by meeting various targets that they could
set for the quarter - and I can't really understand why Amazon has done
things the way that they have chosen to).

Amazon.com provides affiliates with a range of powerful linking options,
including (among others) options to link to individual products, to their home page, and
various ad panels which can show targeted offers from particular categories
at Amazon.com.

Amazon.com also now have a truly excellent affiliate area with many features for
affiliates, including powerful reporting functions, link generators, tons
of information and even discussion boards for affiliates.

Another strength of Amazon.com's associate program is their Web Services API (Update 2009: Now called "Product Advertising API")
This allows you (with the appropriate scripts installed on your site, such
as
Cusimano's† CGI Script) to automatically search and retrieve the latest Amazon products,
and place them on your web site.

On the negative side, Amazon.com's associate program does have a number
of drawbacks when compared to some other affiliate programs:

Amazon does not use cookies to give you credits for sales from customers
return visits or bookmarks to Amazon - you only earn commission if the customer
buys in the same browser session. While, I find this understandable given
Amazon's other online and offline marketing efforts, no doubt some affiliates
would surely feel that they ought to get commission of more sales.

There are links on Amazon's web site (for example, Internet search and so
on), which you do not each commission on. Again, some affiliates may find
it annoying that they send visitors to Amazon, and those visitors can be offered
options which don't generate the affiliate a commission.

Negative points aside though, Amazon's program does work, and associate
traffic, does in our experience, affiliate track can earn commissions.
Of course, as the percentage commissions can be quite low (which is unsurprising
as I doubt there is a massive profit margin for Amazon on many of their products),
you will need to sell a lot of stuff, if you want to make a large commission
per quarter.

Finally, I ought to quickly point out that Amazon's international sites (Japan,
Germany, UK, etc.) have separate associate programs, which, if you're interested in
them, you'll need to join separately. Although the broad strokes of the
international sites' associate programs may be similar to Amazon.com, the details
may vary - so you'll also need to check each of the international sites
separately.

Conclusions

Amazon.com's Associate program is a long-running well-establish affiliate program.
It's easy to use, and affiliate support is excellent.

The Web Services interface is an incredibly powerful feature for associates
which allows them to build content and maintain current ads with ease.
(But remember you will need a script of some sort
-
for example:
Cusimano's CGI Script
- if you want to exploit this particular feature).

The vast range of different products at Amazon.com means that regardless of
the topic of your web site, you should be to find suitable matching products
to link to.

I won't pretend that it is easy to earn absolutely massive commissions from
Amazon. To do so, requires that you sell a lot of products, which in turn
probably requires that you are able to generate massive traffic.

However, with a bit of effort, I think that many webmasters should be
able to earn steady commissions, which form a nice additional stream of
income from their web sites.

As explained in our
Advertising/Endorsements Disclosures,
we try to honestly and fairly describe our own experiences in relation to
third party products and services, - however:
Our results and experiences with third party products and services are not necessarily typical,
and are not intended to be represented as such.
Your results and experiences using any particular third party product or service may differ from our results and experiences.
An average consumer's results and experience using any particular third party product or service may also
differ from our results and experiences.

†Disclosure:
Advertising Link(s): Our company may receive a payment if you purchase a product/service after following
this link.

Disclosure:
Our company's websites' content (including this website's content) includes advertisements for
our own company's websites, products, and services,
and for other organization's websites, products, and services.
In the case of links to other organization's websites,
our company may receive a payment, (1) if you purchase products or services,
or (2) if you sign-up for third party offers, after following links from this website.
Unless specifically otherwise stated, information about other organization's products and services,
is based on information provided by that organization,
the product/service vendor, and/or publicly available information - and should
not be taken to mean that we have used the product/service in question.
Additionally, our company's websites contain some adverts which we are paid
to display, but whose content is not selected by us, such as Google AdSense ads. For more
detailed information, please see Advertising/Endorsements Disclosures

With any business, it is up to the individual owner of said business to ensure
the success of the business. You may make more or less than any sample
figures or results that might be quoted on our web sites or other publications.
All business involves risk, and many businesses do not succeed.
Further, Answers 2000 Limited does NOT represent that any particular
individual or business is typical, or that any results or experiences
achieved by any particular individual/business is necessarily typical.

Our sites use cookies, some of which may already be set on your computer. Use of our site
constitutes consent for this. For details, please see Privacy.

CERTAIN CONTENT THAT APPEARS ON THIS SITE COMES FROM AMAZON SERVICES LLC. THIS CONTENT IS PROVIDED 'AS IS' AND IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE OR REMOVAL AT ANY TIME.CERTAIN CONTENT THAT APPEARS ON THIS SITE,COMES FROM AMAZON EU S.à r.l. THIS CONTENT IS PROVIDED 'AS IS' AND IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE OR REMOVAL AT ANY TIME.

In Association With Amazon.comAnswers 2000 Limited is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.
In Association With Amazon.co.ukAnswers 2000 Limited is a participant in the Amazon EU Associates Programme, an affiliate advertising programme designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.co.uk.

All trademarks are property of their respective owners.
All third party content and adverts are copyright of their respective owners.

Some graphics on our web sites are Copyright (C) 1997-2000 Hemera Technologies Inc., and used under license.
All such pictures are provided for viewing purposes only and are not to be saved or downloaded.
All such pictures of recognizable individuals are models and used for illustrative purposes only, and not meant to imply any association or endorsement of said individual with any product or service.